The Religion of the North American Indians
Part II
By Christopher Dawson
1. The Pueblo Priesthoods and the Warrior Peoples
In the case of the Pueblo culture of New Mexico we have a most
remarkable example of a society based on the sacred ritual order,
which has endured almost intact, while the surrounding native peoples
and cultures that were far more fluid and apparently capable of
adaptation to new conditions have withered and practically
disappeared. This is an almost perfect example of a society or group
of societies governed by an elaborate ceremonial order administered
by a number of priesthoods or religious corporations whose ceremonial
observances occupy the major part of the time and the attention of
the community.
It is impossible to find a more completely socialized type of
culture, in which every activity and every emotion have their
appointed place which does not change from year to year or from
generation to generation. Even economic interests are subordinated to
religious considerations, and a man's prestige and social importance
depend not on his wealth but on knowledge of ritual and his inherited
prerogatives in the ceremonial order.
The culture of the Pueblos, was not only more advanced, it was also
more enduring than that of the Indians of the Plains. It shows that
it is possible for a society to maintain itself through the ages
without internal decadence on a strictly theocratic basis without
appealing to the dynamism of aggression and competition. On the other
hand, it remained static, without any considerable tendency to expand
-- indeed rather the reverse; while the Indians of the Plains
expanded very rapidly over an immense extent of territory, and for a
time pressed hard on the higher civilization of the Pueblo peoples.
And further south in Mexico the highest native civilization of the
Continent was attained when a warrior people from the north overran a
higher civilization of the theocratic type which had been developed
by the Maya, and thus pro- duced the complex blend of theocratic and
warrior elements which characterized the Aztec culture. But the
result of this blending of two opposite types of culture was an
extreme development of ritual human sacrifice which made the Aztec
cult perhaps the most sanguinary and inhuman form of worship that has
ever existed.
Thus in the New World we see the characteristic types of religious
culture more sharply defined, and developed in more exaggerated forms
than in the Old.
, pp. 158-160
2. Religious Ritual Among The Zuni Indians
The Prophet is the organ of divine inspirations, the King is the
organ of sacred power, but the Priest is the organ of knowledge --
the master of sacred science. And this is to be seen not only in
advanced and highly intellectualized cultures, like that of India; it
is already manifest in the higher forms of barbarian society, in
Polynesia, in parts of Africa and in America. Perhaps the most
complete and certainly the most fully-studied example is to be found
in the Pueblo culture of New Mexico which has survived intact through
all the changes of surrounding cultures, thanks to the stabilizing
power of a sacred ritual maintained by the tradition of the
priesthood.
In her striking studies of Zuni culture Miss Ruth Benedict has shown
how the whole social life of the people is absorbed and dominated by
their rich and complex ritual order.
"Their cults of the masked gods, of healing, of the sun, of the
sacred fetishes, of war, of the dead," she writes, "are formal and
established bodies of ritual with priestly officials and calendric
observances. No field of activity competes with ritual for foremost
place in their attention. Probably most grown men among the Western
Pueblos give to it the greater part of their working life. It
requires the memorizing of an amount of word-perfect ritual which our
less trained minds find staggering, and the performance of neatly
dovetailed ceremonies that are charted by the calendar and complexly
interlock all the different cults and the governing body in endless
formal procedure." [, pp. 59-60]
In such a society the priest is inevitably the leading figure, and he
owes his power and prestige not to his individual inspiration or
character but to his knowledge and his initiation into an inherited
tradition of ritual science. "The Zuni phrase for a person with power
is `one who knows how'", and the priest is the man "who knows how" in
the sacred techniques which govern the relations of the community
with the transcendent powers.
It is true that these techniques are not essentially different from
those to be found amongst the most primitive peoples -- masked
dances, rain-making ceremonies, fertility rites and the rest. The
difference lies in the higher degree of integration that they have
attained, with the result that Zuni society achieves the ideal of a
liturgical culture in which the whole corporate way of life is
ordered to the service of the gods in a continual cycle of prayer and
sacramental action.
And it is the same with the institution of priesthood itself. Looked
at from one side, the Zuni priest is indistinguishable form the
savage magician or medicine-man. But looked at from the other, he is
obviously closely akin to the temple priesthoods of Central America,
which in turn are identical in social function and intellectual
position with the great temple priesthoods of the archaic culture in
Mesopotamia and Egypt.
, pp.102-103.
3. Prophecy and The Discernment of Spirits
As a rule the higher the type of culture the rarer and the more
highly prized is this gift, so that by the time the cultural mould of
a higher religion is firmly set the succession of the prophets has
come to an end and the sacred canon is closed.
On the other hand, in more primitive cultures the prophetic gift is
more widely diffused. Among the American Indian peoples above all,
there have been tribes in which almost every normal man aspires to
visionary experience and to the acquisition of supernatural powers,
and as a rule it is only after prayer and fasting or other acts of
mortification that he can attain his end. The religious and social
implications of the ascetic experience are well shown in A. B.
Skinner's account of the words in which the Iowa Shaman addresses a
youth before he goes into retreat to prepare for his visionary
experience. "The time has come to use the charcoal (with which the
youth smears his face). Let thy tears fall on our mother, the Earth,
that she may have pity on thee and help thee in thy need. Seek thy
way; the Creator will help thee. He sends thee perchance a voice and
prophesies to thee whether thou wilt gain renown in thy tribe or no.
Perchance thou wilt dream of the thunder or of some other being
above, his helper or servant. May they vouchsafe thee long life!
Entreat help of the Sun. The Sun is a great power. But if there comes
some power out of the water or from the earth, take it not; let it
be; turn not thy attention to it. Hear nought of it; otherwise thou
wilt quickly die. For so must thou hold thyself. Be cautious. There
are heavenly powers and powers of evil, and these seek to deceive
thee. Thou must be ready to fast, for if Wakonda helps thee, thou
wilt become a great man, a protector of thy people and thou wilt
obtain honour." p. 739.
Here we see that association of social prestige and advancement with
supernatural experience which is so characteristic of Shamanism in
every part of the world, and most of all in America. But there is
also a strong emphasis on spiritual values which are not of social
origin, a consciousness of the supernatural dangers that beset the
spiritual journey and of the need for the discernment of spirits. And
when we come to the greater figures which this culture has produced -
to the prophet of the Delawares who inspired Pontiac, to the brother
of Tecumseh, the Shawnee prophet, who took for himself the name
Tenkswatawa, "The Open Door", to Kanakuk, the Kickapoo prophet of the
early seventeenth century, or to Wovoka, the Piviotso prophet, we see
how under the stress of national disaster this barbaric type of
prophetic religion was capable of producing a series of Messianic
leaders who attempted to save their people by moral and religious
reformation of their culture.
This kind of development is not confined to North America, it is in
fact the normal reaction of the prophetic type of religion whenever
the culture is threatened by alien influences; as we see in South
Africa, in the Sudan and in New Zealand, during the nineteenth
century.
, pp. 69-70.
4. The Ghost Dance and The Plains Indians
It is difficult for a civilized man to understand either the
religious significance or the cultural importance of such ceremonies.
But to the primitive the dance or mime is at once the highest form of
social activity and the most powerful kind of religious action.
Through it the community participates in a mystery which confers
supernatural efficacy upon its action. How this may affect social
life and change the course of historical events may be seen in the
rise of the Ghost Dance religion among the Indians of the Plains at
the end of the nineteenth century. Here we have a well attested case
of how a dance may become the medium by which the religious
experience of an individual may be socialized and transmitted from
one people to another with revolutionary political effects. Wovoka,
an Indian of a little known and unimportant tribe in Nevada, received
in a vision a dance the performance of which would bring back the
spirits of their dead ancestors and the vanished herds of buffalo and
the good times that were past. The dance cult spread like wildfire
eastward across the mountains to the Indians of the great plains and
finally stimulated the Sioux to their last desperate rising against
the United States government.
The most remarkable thing about this movement was the extreme
rapidity with which it communicated itself from people to people
across halt the continent, so that if it had not been defeated by a
hopeless inequality of material power, the Ghost Dance might have
changed not only the religion but also the social existence of the
Indians of the Middle West in the course of a few years. Such
revolutionary changes are in fact by no means rare in history. We
have an example of it on the higher religious level and on a vast
historical scale int he case of the rise of Islam. Here we see in
full clearness and detail how a new religion may create a new
culture. A single individual living in a cultural backwater
originates a movement which in a comparatively short time sweeps
across the world, destroying historic empires and civilizations and
creating a new way of life which still molds the thought and behavior
of millions from Senegal to Borneo.
(1948). pp. 52-53.
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